


Home Is Wherever I'm With You

by Lacy_Star



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Baking, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-24 05:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30067173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacy_Star/pseuds/Lacy_Star
Summary: Jack cleared his throat, “Uh, Niki, remember that proposition—“A loud countertop alarm ringed and rattled, and Niki startled to turn it off, “Oh! Hold that thought.”He went quiet as she slipped on two oven mitts, and he had to squint, because…Yellow. Buttercup yellow with pink and white trim. A hole in the thumb she’d always forget to sew up, and regret when she inevitably burned her thumb on the—“Ow, fuck!” She swore lightly, sticking her thumb in her mouth to cool it as she quickly set the pan on the counter.Those were her oven mitts from L’manberg. The old bakery.---AKA: A collection of short drabbles surrounding prompts given for the DSMP Big Bang Bootcamp!
Relationships: Cara | CaptainPuffy & Clay | Dream, Jack Manifold & Niki | Nihachu
Comments: 19
Kudos: 53
Collections: DSMP Big Bang Bootcamp





	1. Bread

**Author's Note:**

> (You can check what the prompt for each drabble is by looking at the chapter title!)
> 
> These are meant to be short writing exercises, so there might be sloppy editing! I apologize in advance.
> 
> Please do not steal or plagiarize my work.

The first thing Jack was greeted with upon entering Niki’s city was the scent of bread.

It wafted strongly through the air on a nonexistent breeze, a welcome mask to the usual smell of drying mortar Niki used to lay the bricks that lined the underground safe haven. It seemed she was taking a break, if only for today, from her rigorous construction project.

Jack stepped cautiously inside, glancing around the gigantic room for the girl. “Niki!?” He called out.

From the faint depths of the cavern, a voice singsonged, “Over here! In the kitchen!”

He followed the sound of the girl’s voice, unable to muster the same amount of joy she projected in her words. His footsteps echoed all around him as he ventured deeper into the catacombs, the scent of bread luring him in.

This was not a happy occasion. How could he be happy when the very _vermin_ he’d thought was gone for good had returned to haunt them all, to cause more destruction, and to further ruin his life?

Niki was the only person who understood that. At least, he _thought_ she did. When he’d proposed, yet again, to murder Tommy about a week earlier, her face had clouded in doubt, hesitance.

“ _It wasn’t his fault Wilbur left_ ,” She’d said.

Fair enough, but it was his fault that a slew of other terrible things had happened. Hopefully she’d remembered that by now.

Niki’s city was pretty cold, being that it was underground and made entirely out of stone. Compared to Snowchester, it was balmy, but Jack still longed for his jacket as he walked.

He came to a sudden pause when he heard humming, melodic and sweet. Familiar. He hadn’t heard that since…

Following the melody, he was led into a kitchen and hit with a wave of warmth from a busy oven in the corner. Niki had her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, dancing around with her eyes half-closed as she half-sung half-baked stanzas. She pulled a lump of dough from a bowl and slapped it flat on the counter, which was coated in a fine layer of flour, and began to knead at it. A smile graced her face, despite there being no reason for it to be there at all.

Jack was frozen in place where he stood in the doorway. For a moment, it felt like he’d travelled back months and months in time, walking into Niki’s old bakery in L’manberg and finding her just like this as she prepared a new delicacy that would lure any passerby inside.

He felt younger, lighter. As if he was witnessing something precious.

She glanced up to meet his eyes, and instantly he noticed the color that had returned to them, the healthy weight in her cheeks, and the lack of dark circles. Had she been sleeping more?

“Jack!” She greeted cheerily, “What’s up?”

Right. This wasn’t a simpler time. This was dire.

He cleared his throat, “Uh, Niki, remember that proposition—“

A loud countertop alarm ringed and rattled, and Niki startled to turn it off, “Oh! Hold that thought.”

He went quiet as she slipped on two oven mitts, and he had to squint, because…

Yellow. Buttercup yellow with pink and white trim. A hole in the thumb she’d always forget to sew up, and regret when she inevitably burned her thumb on the—

“Ow, fuck!” She swore lightly, sticking her thumb in her mouth to cool it as she quickly set the pan on the counter.

Those were her oven mitts from L’manberg. The old bakery.

Jack pointed to them, slack jawed. “They… I thought you burned your bakery down?”

Niki glanced to the mitts as she took one off and tossed it to the side. “Oh, yeah, I uh… I’d left them at Puffy’s house when I was cooking with her. So… they survived.” She smiled faintly, “Figured keeping them saved me from tracking down a new pair.”

Jack wasn’t sure what to say.

She turned her attention to him fully, pointing to the fresh loaf of bread on the tray she’d just pulled. “Hey, will you be staying long? Do you want a slice? I have jam!”

He was here strictly for business. It was going to be a short trip; get her answer, pitch his scheme, then part to get resources.

But how long had it been since he’d had a slice of Niki’s bread?

“… Yeah,” He said, surprised by the softness in his own voice, “Yeah, I’ll have a piece.”

She smiled widely at him and gestured for him to take a seat on a stool opposite her at the island counter she worked on. He sat down as she fetched a bread knife from a drawer and slid over a few jam jars for him to select from. Sweet berry, blueberry, blackberry…

“I also have butter and honey if you want one of those!”

Tommy had always insisted on blueberry jam, without fail. He would have nothing else, and was the sole reason why Niki’s jars would go empty in days.

_“What’ll it be this time, Tommy?” She used to ask._

_The loud reply would be, “The fuck do you think?”_

_It wouldn’t matter. She’d already have lathered blueberry over his piece of bread, and would be handing it to him before the retort left his mouth._

_She’d just smile at him knowingly, and Tommy, in a moment of rare politeness, would mumble a little, “Thank you.”_

Jack averted his eyes from the blueberry jam. Out of sight, out of mind. He muttered, “Blackberry, please,” As she set her mitted hand on the bread to prevent another burn, and cut off two slices with her other hand. A waft of steam rose as the knife sawed through the crust, and Jack hadn’t realized that he was starving until that exact moment.

She did him the kindness of taking the heel of the loaf for herself and giving him the nicer slice, setting each on a separate plate and tracking down a butter knife. “So…” She apologized, “Sorry about that.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

She spread a generous layer of blackberry jam over his piece of bread and slid his plate over before going to spread sweet berry on her own. “Careful, it’s hot. What did you need?”

Right, Tommy. “Remember my proposition from a week ago.”

She hummed softly as she recalled, and then her knife stilled entirely over the bread, her face falling. That on its own gave Jack the answer all he needed, his stomach dropping. “Oh,” She said quietly, “Right.”

“… You don’t want to help?” He huffed disbelievingly. Because after all those weeks, all those nukes, _now_ she’d grown a conscience?

Jack didn’t mind being evil. It was a harmless evil (to everyone besides Tommy, at least). It gave him a purpose.

He should’ve known Niki was too soft for that.

She didn’t answer him, setting the knife down and taking the blackberry and sweet berry jam jars in both hands. Sighing, she carried them back over to put them away on a shelf.

“I don’t know, Jack…” She said after a moment.

“He hurt you!” He insisted, “He hurt _me!_ He fuckin’ _destroyed_ the land we live on, and now he’s on about going after Dream _again!_ How well did that go last time!? Do you— do you _want_ more people dead!? Do you—“ His stomach cut him off with a growl, totally ruining the moment as the warm, inviting smell wafted up from the bread and curled around him like a blanket. “Oh, fuckin’, shut up,” He mumbled to himself, snatching the bread from the plate and shoving it in his mouth and—

Niki’s bread. There was nothing that compared to Niki’s bread. Nobody put such love, such care into each loaf. Nothing said “I love you” more than the taste of Niki’s bread.

He chewed the fluffy sourdough, sweet blackberry drenching his tongue, and a pleased hum rumbled from his throat before he could silence it. His heart ached for something long gone, finally returned.

Niki came back and picked up the jar of blueberry jam to put it away. She paused, staring down at it, and her eyes flashed with something similar to grief as she, too, recalled those sunnier days.

Jack swallowed his mouthful. He’d missed her bread. He’d missed Niki.

Niki wouldn’t murder a child.

She glanced up from the jam in her hand, locking eyes with him. And when she sighed and said, “Just leave the poor kid alone, Jack,” only _then_ did Jack Manifold know he was well and truly alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now a file in my computer just titled "BREAD" in all caps for this drabble and I love that for me


	2. Hugging

He wouldn’t even look at her when she entered.

Puffy had noticed him glance at her when she’d been crossing the bridge, but instantly he’d cowered into the corner of his cell. She wondered if he was like that with everyone who visited him.

But when she stepped in and the lava dripped back down behind her, he didn’t look at her. Didn’t even speak. His face was cast down in… guilt? Remorse? Did he still feel those?

Who had sucked the empathy out of him, she wondered. Who was to blame?

Puffy cleared her throat. If he wasn’t going to talk, she’d have to be the first to. “… Are you okay?”

Dream didn’t nod yes or no, didn’t say a word. He just sat in the corner and stared at the floor.

Puffy dared step forward; he couldn’t hurt her anyways. “You know what you did wrong, right?”

Nothing.

“I’m not going to tell you. I know you know. I bet everyone else who’s visited has told you, too.”

It was as if she was having a conversation with herself. She took another step towards him.

“… What happened, Dream?”

Again, he didn’t grace her with an answer. She sighed and went to crouch in front of him, and even then he didn’t dare meet her eyes.

The boy in front of her looked older, colder, and more hardened than she remembered. Had there been a moment, she wondered, when he’d changed? When the switch had flipped? And had she been there, could she have prevented it? Could she have prevented the tragedies that had plagued them just by being there?

Swallowing thickly, she looked around at the tiny cramped cell, sweltering with heat, not suitable for even a tiger to pace around.

This was no place for a child.

“… I remember,” She said at last, “Shortly after I came here. You never greeted me, not really. I went out to collect some wood for my house and I remember… feeling watched. And at first I was so scared, because,” She chuckled, remembering the hairs stand up on the back of her neck; it was a terrifying sensation, to be out alone and be followed, “because I didn’t know if it was some monster or animal stalking me. And then you— haha— you climbed the trees to follow me from above, and a branch snapped and you fell, and I whirl around and grab my sword because here I am thinkin’ a freakin’ bear is after me or something, but instead I just see you on the ground with that stupid paper mache mask, or whatever it was…”

He didn’t have the mask on anymore. Puffy was honestly glad to see it gone. “… And you knew I’d spotted you and ran away. Or, I thought you did. I lost track of time and soon it was night and, y’know, I hadn’t been on the server long, so I didn’t know my way back really well… So now I had to fight off all these mobs, and I’m getting overwhelmed, and then I hear this hiss from behind me, and I think, ‘well this is it for me.’

“But then an arrow flies over my head and hits and kills the creeper in one shot, and I look and I see you for a split second before you dash away again. You saved my life. Do you remember that?”

Still no response.

A tough crowd, but she knew he was listening, so she continued, “You kept following me like that. And that’s when I started calling you my… do you remember?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed thickly. She could practically hear him answering in his head. _Duckling._

“Duckling,” She finished for him, “I started calling you my duckling, because you always followed after me like a momma duck.”

And now he was here.

“… Why did you follow me in the first place, anyways?”

She’d always wondered that. It seemed that she wouldn’t know the answer, still. At least, not today.

Puffy looked the abuser, murderer, and tyrant up and down in front of her, but couldn’t see it. She knew he deserved what he gotten. She knew he’d been horrible. But she could only see her duckling.

So she leaned in towards the monster and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him like she would her son.

“Oh, Duckling…” She sighed, heart so heavy it nauseated her, “… What have you gotten yourself into?”

And Dream did not speak. Did not raise his arms and hug back. But, almost imperceptibly, he tilted his head forward, resting his chin on her shoulder, and let out a heavy breath, releasing some of his weight onto her and letting her bear it.

It was the least she could do, Puffy mused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something something toriel and flowey


	3. Excitement

Dream was in prison.

_Dream was in prison._

And Tommy was free.

He stepped out into a rainy sky, Sam calling a goodbye after him. The shadow that Pandora’s Vault cast swallowed him, and he ran to get away from it.

Rain on his skin, in his hair, on his lips, clinging to his eyelashes.

Tommy was _free!_

For no reason, he was laughing. Laughing at the peace that he’d won. Peace at last. Dream was in prison. Tommy was free.

Tommy had a trident, and it was raining. It was a trident, and it was his, and the rain was all his, and the sky was his, and he pulled the trident from his back, pointed it to the sky, and felt himself fly through the air, raindrops whirring like bullets around him. He could hear his heart in his ears, giving rhythm to the occasional cymbal crash of thunder, and every lighting strike pulsed through his fingers and set him ablaze. And he laughed and screamed a melody so boyishly wonderful it made his throat go raw.

Higher, higher, flying. His feet rested on the handle of the trident, riding it like Apollo’s chariot chasing the sky goodnight, and he was flying.

A pause in the air as he stopped moving forward. A split second where, as the tip of the trident pitched back to earth, the rain held still in the air, and he peeked down and saw the world so far below.

The only time he’d been this high up was on the tower, when he’d tried to— he’d tried to…

But that land hadn’t been his. He hadn’t been free. The sky’s limit felt like a cage rather than a dare.

As he began to glide back down, Tommy felt no fear, only rushing exhilaration, only excitement. And he grinned at the approaching world. Kill him. It wouldn’t. He dared it to.

It was all his now. He had it all. He had all the land and every drop of water that surrounded him and the trident and the lightning and the thunder and the breath in his lungs and the wind in his ears and Tubbo and the hotel and the _discs._

And that damn tower? He’d built it. He’d resolved himself. He’d conquered it. God damn it, that was his too.

Tommy did not fall to the ground that day. He glided. He soared.

He was free.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my [Tumblr](https://lacystar.tumblr.com)!


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